Nature Boy Megamegamix update

A while back, I made a mashup of many different versions of “Nature Boy”, one of the loveliest and weirdest jazz standards. Every so often I go back and add new versions to it. Here’s the latest update. Nature Boy Megamegamix by Ethan Hein I added Jon Hassell’s recording of the tune over the beat from …

Bach Anxiety

Someday I want to write something long about Bach. (Maybe I’ll call it Bach to the Future, ha ha.) I have been slowly building toward it by doing a lot of Bach analysis here on the blog. My pandemic project has been learning movements from the D minor, G minor and E major violin partitas …

Morning Dew

Do you ever think about how there are several thousand nuclear missiles sitting in silos around the world, ready to launch at a moment’s notice? When I was a kid in the 1980s, that was the main macro-level anxiety lurking behind day-to-day life. Now we worry about different things: the climate, the pandemic, the impending …

Transcribing Missy Elliott

As a kid growing up in New York City in the 80s, I loved rap, especially Run-DMC. In my teens, I moved away from it under the pressure of my rockist peers and other white nonsense. I found my way back into rap fandom as an adult, thanks in large part to Missy Elliott’s music …

An intro to remixes

One of the most significant developments in the past fifty years of popular music is the idea of using existing recordings as raw material for new musical expression. The remix began as a way to make dance versions of pop songs, but it has evolved into an entire new art medium unto itself.

Glenn Gould wanted me to make this remix

Glenn Gould thought people should make their own edits of classical recordings. He explains this idea in greater depth here. I read it and thought, challenge accepted!

Remixing Ben Shapiro

My dissertation research includes a methodology of my own invention, which I’m calling analytical remixing. I’m writing about three hip-hop educators, in order to illuminate hip-hop as an education philosophy, not just a subject area. That includes centering the remix as an important and underexplored music education practice. Beyond just writing about remixing, I am making …